Category Archives: Delusions of Grandeur

Jan 14 2013

A New Year’s Revelation

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It’s the start of a new year. There are lots of people jogging (everywhere, all the time), because it’s that time of year where we punish ourselves for our vices and decide that by this time next year, we will most definitely be a much better person.

I tell myself to be a much better person at the beginning of every week, never mind the beginning of every year. And every time I decide to go forth and become an infinitely better person, the whole thing quickly falls apart and I soon end up feeling much worse than I did to begin with.

This year, I’ve decided not to set myself up for failure and I haven’t made any  New Year’s resolutions. There are two reasons I always totally flunk at New Year’s resolutions:

1. I expect to see changes in myself almost immediately after deciding that I’m going to change.

Life changes 1 

2. My resolutions tend to be a bit vague and immeasurable like “Be healthy” or “Be less shit at everything”.

New year's resolutions

A while ago I wrote this post about how much I wanted to be someone totally different – someone who wakes up at dawn to do yoga, someone who is creative, productive and successful, someone who has deep philosophical conversations, someone who… (the list goes on). I have to be honest with myself: I AM NEVER going to be someone who wakes up bright and early, and does Yoga while reading… I dunno, Plato or whatever. What’s more, I’m actually okay with the fact I will never be this person.

Change shouldn’t about shoe-horning myself into a personality that doesn’t fit. My ideal version of myself – the clever, healthy, active creative with a mind that’s totally Zen – is not me. It’s never going to be me. If I became this person – the “perfect Me” – and I met perfect Me at a party, I would most probably want to punch perfect Me in the face. When I really think about it, perfect Me isn’t someone I would want to spend a lot of time with. I wouldn’t know what to talk to perfect Me about. In fact, perfect Me is probably someone I would bitch about behind their back. I would roll my eyes whenever perfect Me was talking. Perfect me probably wears Lycra and goes jogging. Perfect Me is probably a fussy eater… And that’s pretty much a deal breaker.

The more I thought about it, the more the perfect Me became less perfect and more smug and annoying. I realised that I don’t really like perfect Me at all. And if I don’t like the perfect version of myself, then why tell myself to become that person in the first place?

I started to wonder what was really so terrible about my imperfect life to make me feel like I had to become this Lycra-wearing object of perfection.

I decided to review what I’d achieved in 2012. While I realise that I didn’t make any particularly massive leaps forward with my life, in review, I think I achieved a fair amount. I completed the taught seminars on my MA, where I also made loads of new friends, I re-connected with old friends, I started writing for a couple of websites, I started writing a new novel and I (admittedly, in a totally random and seemingly impulsive manner) bought a dog.

And while none of my 2012 accomplishments have earned me an impressive salary, or landed me a publishing deal, or got me into some Lycra trousers, I’m safe in the knowledge that, in the very least, I’m heading in the right direction.

In the end, I decided to stop tormenting myself with thoughts of having a massive life overhaul and of becoming a person I don’t really want to be. And while there’s still a lot of room for change in my life, ultimately, I’m doing okay. Most people are doing okay. And that’s okay.

So while I’m still fully committed to trying new things and continuing with my 30 Before 30 list, I’m also not pretending that by the end of 2013, I will be a fit and healthy, intellectual, best-selling novelist with zero financial worries and a buzzing social life. All I want to get out of this year is to learn to be more appreciative of the things I have got and to just keep chipping away, slowly but surely, at the things I really want.

So here’s to 2013 – what I hope will be a slightly better year than 2012.

Jul 11 2012

I’m Recruiting: Could You Be My Mentor?

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I wish I had a mentor. I can’t really explain why, but I think that it has something to do with my neediness abandonment issues aspirations of becoming a writer.

I recently committed myself to becoming a full time writer. That’s the dream – writing… ALL the time. Making the decision was easy, but once I had finished celebrating my decision-making, I realised that was the easy part. The reality of my decision involves working really hard all the time and not getting distracted or losing motivation. All the things I’ve perfected being terrible at.

Writing is lonely business. I’ve known that from the off. As a complete social recluse, I guess it’s part of the appeal. But every now and again I’ll get a crisis of confidence – a week will disappear and I’ll question what (if anything) I’ve actually achieved. Then I panic, because I don’t have the right work ethic. My writing isn’t good enough. I’m not marketable as person. I am an impostor, a fraud. I’m not really a writer – aspiring or otherwise and everyone knows it.

This is where the mentor comes in. The mentor has to kick my arse whilst also being supportive and reassuring. But not too supportive and reassuring. Encouragement is difficult to get right, particularly with weirdos like me. Too much encouragement and I’ll momentarily trick myself into believing I am doing so incredibly well that I don’t need to do much of anything for a while. I don’t really respond well to negativity so zero encouragement only confirms my fears of being an under-achiever and prompts me to fall into a depressive slump.

There are loads of potential mentors out there, and I’m sure someone out there might be right for me. But for some reason, whenever I think about my ideal mentor I imagine some dapper gent – someone sophisticated, wise, worldly, humorous, someone successful who can afford to by me mojitos.

Take, for example, Jonathan Ames’ mentor George Christopher in Bored to Death. Apart from the fact that he’s played by Ted Danson which automatically makes him brilliant, he’s a gent, an editor of a magazine, he makes martinis in his office and wears waistcoats. Brilliant. And to top it all off, he offers genuinely good advice:

Although, this is not the sort of chat I would want with my own mentor. Even if he was Ted Danson.

That said, George Christopher isn’t the perfect mentor. My perfect mentor is the mentor of mentors, the crème de la crème, the spaghetti to my cold left-over bolognaise, the Jack Donaghy to my Liz Lemon.

Without a shadow of a doubt Jack Donaghy is my ideal mentor. The tragedy is, my dream mentor is a fictional character played by Alec Baldwin. The only way this fantasy will ever be fulfilled is if Jack Donaghy actually existed and Jack Donaghy actually happened to be Alec Baldwin.

This pretty much renders my search for the perfect mentor futile and perhaps a little bit crazy. I’ve set the bar pretty high. When you set the bar at ‘fictitious character’ you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

I’ve contemplated trying to recruit a mentor  using an application/interview/test process. But I think that might put people off. And I wouldn’t know how to go about ensuring that my application form/interview questions/rigorous testing methods would result in me actually finding my ideal mentor. Also because it looks like a lot of work when I really should be writing. And because I seriously doubt any level-headed person would actually go through the process, so I’d probably just end up with someone more crackers than I am. Not ideal.

So the search for the mentor kind of continues whilst also collapsing and becoming redundant at the same time. My dream mentor doesn’t exist, so I can only hope that some day a Jack Donaghy/Alec Baldwin type will appear in reality. If they do, and they become my mentor, I suggest that their first job is to stop me from wishing fictional characters actually existed.

In the meantime, (and in case you have no idea who Jack Donaghy is) here are some of Jack’s greatest personal attributes.

Best. Mentor. Ever.
Apr 13 2012

The Blog Post I Never Posted (and other stories)…

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Before you go wondering whether I’ve fallen off the edge of the planet (again), allow me to reel off some excuses explain why I’m a little late with this post.

Okay, I actually did write a blog post three weeks ago. It’s just that I never posted it. I couldn’t really bring myself to post it because it was… well… quite depressing. I redrafted it several times, each time trying desperately to make it sound a little more chipper. And each time I thought that it was finished I’d tell myself to sleep on it and review it again in the morning before I published it. The next morning I’d wake up and start the editing process all over again. This went on for days and eventually I realised that I just couldn’t bring myself to publish it.

The post was about the fact I was consistently worrying about my future. I was worrying about being a writer, why I wanted to be a writer and if I’d ever really be one. I also wrote about how much I was worried that people saw me as deluded – and how sometimes I felt like there was some sort of judgemental crowd regarding my writer-aspirations as ‘something I should get over’ and that I should grow-up and get a proper job.

In my post, I suggested that in order to combat such worries of being deluded, aspiring writers should join together in some sort of support group. It would be Alcoholics Anonymous meets The Book Group – but with more tea and biscuits. And we would wear badges like this:

hellomynameisjo

Anyway, not to completely launch into this whole debate all over again (and rewrite my original post for the 9 billionth time), but the reason I didn’t publish the post was because it was becoming a snowballing issue, and while it helped to write about it, I don’t think that the internet is the right place to broadcast feelings on an existential crisis (but it might make a very good book). I like to blog about my neurotic ways, and the embarrassing situations I get myself into on a fairly regular basis – but I couldn’t bring myself to confess all the anxieties I have about my future. That kind of chat is reserved for unsuspecting close friends after a few Mojitos.

So, basically what I’m saying is, by not publishing my post I saved you 5-10 minutes of your precious time. You’re welcome.

Realising the overly serious tone of my blog post of existential crisis (which I never actually published), I decided that (if I did publish it) I should maybe follow it up with something a little more light-hearted. So I considered writing a post detailing how much I cheated on my Primal diet – which involved scoffing a sausage and egg McMuffin, some sort of artisan luxury French chocolate gateaux and a pizza (or two). Sadly, I never got around to drafting it and since having the idea I’ve been on a jaunt to Spain and eaten my way through Easter. This means that previous diet cheats are comparatively insignificant. If you’re still curious as to how much I cheated on my Primal diet, then simply consult the following mathematical equation:

Lots

The day before I left for Spain, I was chatted up. Twice. In the same day. This was very strange for me, because I’ve never, ever been chatted up before. By anyone. Ever. This is because I have spent  my life, in equal parts, being every girl’s ‘unattractive best friend’ and a total social recluse.

What happened? Well, it was a sunny afternoon and I had decided to spend the afternoon in town reading. A folded piece of paper was slid across the bench in my direction. ‘For you’ said man’s voice. I quickly discarded my initial thoughts that God was addressing me, and looked up to see a man scurry (with impressive speed) from the bench in the opposite direction. I unfolded the note:

u r beautiful

Underneath was (presumably) his phone number.

I was about 9% flattered and 91% amused. The flattery stems from the fact that I’ve never been called beautiful before. Certainly not on paper. To put this in context, here’s a list of other things I have been called:

About an hour later, a boy (I don’t think he could have been older than 17) sat next to me and almost immediately struck up a conversation that went something like this:

Boy: What are you reading?

Me: Stuff.

Boy: Oh.

Pause.

Boy: Are you a student here?

Me: Not exactly.

Pause.

Boy: What do you do then?

Me: I want to be a writer.

Boy: Oh. Is that something you’re… passionate about?

Me: Er… Yeah.

Pause.

Boy: YOU’RE VERY PRETTY!

Pause.

Me: Er. Thanks.

Boy: [Laughs Nervously/Manically]

Long Pause.

Boy: I can leave you alone if you want?

Me: [shrug] It’s fine. – I didn’t have the heart to say ‘Yes, please go away…

Boy: Sooooooo…. Can I er, see you again?

Startled, I shook my head and in a slightly more frantic manner than intended blurted NO! Then modifying it to a more polite ‘No, thank you,’ before realising that didn’t really make any sense. Then the boy laughed nervously again. Then he scurried away in the same direction as the last one.

Then I decided to do the rest of my reading at home.

In other news, Smoking Guy has had a haircut and developed a cough. We have still not conversed. Also, someone recently found my blog by Googling “professional smoking job”. Seriously, is that a real thing?

Feb 18 2012

Why my attempts at being confident make me feel like a knobhead

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I’ve become convinced that my crippling lack of confidence is becoming a bit of a hindrance.  You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve been told to be more confident (at least 9000 times a day). It’s something that has plagued me forever. Even as a kid, my school reports all said the same thing ‘needs more confidence’ as though they had been rubber stamped by every teacher, for every subject, for every year until I left. I’m now almost convinced that if I was more confident, I might kick-ass (but probably not).

Compared to how I used to be, I think I am pretty confident these days. At one point I was too scared to go out for a meal or drink in a bar, because the prospect of actually having to order food or drink from another person was completely terrifying. In the past few years there have been various little confidence hurdles I’ve (somehow) managed to get over, but others are a little trickier. What’s frustrating, is the way that people tell me to ‘just be more confident’ as if a) I’d never realised that before and b) there’s some kind of switch inside that just needs flicking on – releasing some kind of previously untapped super-confidence resource that’s just been lying dormant until now. I don’t think that switch exists, or if it does, it’s faulty and I keep flicking it on and off out of boredom. I don’t know how to be more confident and (hand on heart) I have tried.

The thing is, whenever I attempt to be more confident, I get stuck in an endless loop, because I hate cocky, over-confident knobheads. While I want to be confident, I don’t want to be a knobhead, and  it is a scientific fact that there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance:

super fine line

My problem (as with everything) is I try too hard. Whenever I attempt to be confident, I accidentally launch myself over that fine line, and end up talking like a cocky-know-it-all. Afterwards, I tend to despise myself for being a knobhead and thus, remind myself why it’s much better to just keep quiet and not speak at all. But then, not speaking at all reverts me back to my coy little ways, which in turn makes me feel like I’m missing out… It’s a vicious cycle. No. Really – here’s a diagram to prove the theory:

vicious cycle

A perfect example of a vicious cycle – it’s super vicious. You just have to imagine it having really sharp teeth.

So, anyway, vicious cycle, endless loop whatever you want to call it – I can’t escape it. I’m pretty sure most other people manage to go through their daily lives without lurching from crippling shyness to cocky-knobheadedness, and if you are one of those people, then I feel I desperately need to know your secret. My question is: how do you become confident without becoming a knobhead?

PS. I’m not sure how you spell knobhead. ‘Knobhead’ and ‘nobhead’ are apparently both acceptable. I think.

Dec 20 2011

Dealing with shit

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As someone who might be classed as catastrophically disorganised, I have to make a conscious effort to put various systems in place to ensure, not only that I organise myself, but so that I actually do things.

One of these systems (which has recently become a regular feature of day-to-day living) is to write a list of things I need to do that day. This list is designed to motivate (and remind me) to actually do all of the shit I need to do in order to qualify in having some sort of  productive and functional existence. Sometimes there’s quite a lot of shit to do. Sometimes shit has built up over time – shit is carried over from phases of depressive apathy where I do nothing but sit around eating cake and watching cop shows. Sometimes there’s so much shit to do, I don’t know what shitty job to start with first. When this amount of shit has mounted up, one of two things happens: 1) I feel overwhelmed by the amount of shit to do (and retreat into a depressive, apathetic state of lethargy and ‘meh’) or 2) I get all proactive on myself and write a list. As the former reaction merely adds more shitty jobs to the pile, I try to be more proactive in my approach to dealing with shit.

Please consult the following complex mathematical equation which will go some way to explaining this logic further:

Reaction #1

depressive state of apathy

Reaction #2

feelings of self-worth

So now I stick religiously to lists. I can’t live without a good list. I have lists for everything. I have lists for my shitty jobs, I have lists for my non-shitty jobs, I have lists for the supermarket shop, I have lists for things that in no way require a list. Despite the fact that there are a multitude of things which simply do not need to be put on a list, I will place them on one anyway – the more things I have on a list, the better. Because the truth is; without a list things tend to, sort of, not happen. At all. In fact, without a list, shitty jobs or supermarket items, or whatever will cease to exist. Due to relying on my impeccable list system for while now, my brain has become really quite dependant – to the point where it simply fails to acknowledge that something needs doing, or buying or fixing (and so on) if it hasn’t been written on a list.

This is a slightly worrying development.

I suppose that this whole obsessive list-making habit could, potentially, develop into serious case of OCD. But seeing as “consider therapy for developing case of OCD” isn’t featuring on a list anywhere, I’m not going to worry about it.

I love my list system. It works significantly better than simply relying on myself. When I have constructed a list, I congratulate myself for being organised. Having a list makes me feel like a good person because rather than merely ignoring the fact my brain retains very little information, I’m actually doing something about it – which is so unlike me. So, yay! Good for me! Everything will be fine as long as I have a list. I don’t need to remember things, because everything I need to know is on my list (this is starting to sound a bit like the plot from Memento – except no one murdered my wife. I don’t think…. *consults list*).

Thanks to my lists, I no longer need to worry about forgetting to do things, or picking something up from the supermarket (or whatever) and so I allow my brain to go to sleep while I work through the list.

Last week, I noticed a little problem with my list system, thanks to human conditioning which provides me with a glimmer of satisfaction any time I cross something off a list. While I realise it doesn’t sound like a big problem, it does mean that I now have a tendency to rush through the things on my list just so I can have that fleeting sense of satisfaction when I cross them off. This also means I’m putting simple things on my list which require absolutely no effort whatsoever, just so I can cross them off, whilst ignoring bigger, actual jobs which involve lots of effort, as these are too big for me to really do (and just end up on tomorrow’s list instead):

jo's to do list

Worse still, lists do not allow for unexpected events. For example, this weekend my brother and sister-in-law came to visit, and for whatever reason the entire plumbing system went hay-wire causing the kitchen sink to fill with waste water anytime someone used the bathroom. As “clean up flooded kitchen” and “consider plumbing issue” weren’t on the list, I went into a blind panic – telling myself that I had failed because I wasn’t organised to think ahead about how I might deal with such a situation, thus taking the plumbing disaster extremely personally. When the sink started gurgling and filling with what can only really be described as hot liquid rust sick, I almost cried and actually asked the series of pipes beneath the sink why they were doing this to me.

Having spent the past four days being vigorously organised, and writing lists for Christmas presents, Christmas cards, Christmas shopping, cleaning, changing bed linin and a vast array of other Christmas/family visiting preparations, this whole plumbing thing felt like a whopping slap in the face – as though life was mocking me for thinking I could ever be organised.

After this minor household disaster, I’m wondering if I’m going to have to start writing absolutely everything on a list in order to actually make it through the day. I’ve also noticed that I frequently miss things off the list – my forgetfulness doesn’t stop even when I’m being organised and writing lists. So I just make a list of all the things I can remember and ignore all the things I can’t, and because I’ve told myself not rely on my brain (because I have a fail-safe list system) I simply refuse to do anything that didn’t make it onto the list – even when I remember it later.

I’m now at the point of having to write absolutely everything down – BECAUSE ANYTHING THAT DOESN’T FEATURE ON A LIST DOESN’T GET DONE.

The prospect of trying to construct a list covering absolutely everything I have to do, including the things I can’t remember, and the unexpected things (such as plumbing disasters), feels somewhat overwhelming and, well, nearly impossible.

And so phase #1 reoccurs and I retreat into a state of depressive apathy.

Thus, rendering the entire purpose of constructing a list a bit pointless.

Nov 28 2011

How Blogging and Apple Crumbles are the Same (but not really)…

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Recently, I’ve been feeling like a total charlatan with this blog. I call myself a blogger, I tell people I have a website but actually all I have is a string of infrequent updates and an excessive posts about how picky I am when purchasing a new notebook.

I realise that this happens from time to time; I disappear without a trace and then come back with an apology and a long post about whatever and expect people to read it and for my stats to jump through the roof.

Fictional stats

But that doesn’t happen, because in order for your stats to be through the roof, you need to keep up with the internet. The internet is an Olympic runner, and I’m someone who hopes to keep up by running flat out on a treadmill in the gym once a month, and then spending the next three weeks recovering.

Actual stats

Blogging is just like dieting and exercising and anything else really… Breathing – there’s another example. In order to do something well, you need to start by doing it consistently: To diet you need to eat well, every day; to be gym ninja you need to work out at least five times a week; in order to live, you need to breathe all day and all night. Actually, that last one doesn’t really work in this whole simile thing I’ve got going on here. It’s like I’m suggesting blogging is the same as breathing, which I’m not. Blogging is almost nothing like breathing, at all.

Thinking about it, I’m also kind of suggesting that blogging is like dieting or exercising. It’s not like either of those. I’m not really sure where I got the idea for this simile from, but I’m beginning to feel like it’s crumbling around me like… something that crumbles really easily – like apple crumble – that crumbles pretty easily, and is also delicious.

Actually, apple crumble, despite the misleading name, is really not all that crumbly. It just has a crumbly topping. And sometimes that topping is chewy rather than crumbly. In which case, this simile works less well than saying that my original simile is crumbling around me like apple crumble. Because I’m not sure a simile can be chewy.

Okay, I’m giving up on similes because this is becoming a disaster.

And now I’ve pretty much forgotten what the hell I was talking about initially, because I was all “Mmm apple crumble is delicious, but not as a simile…”

Okay, yes. Blogging. Which, while not really similar to dieting or exercise by nature, it does operate on the same principle in that in order to be successful at blogging (or dieting, or exercising) you have to do it consistently.

Actually, blogging is a lot like those Tamagotchi things. Remember those? They were like tiny little virtual pixelated creatures that you had to look after and ‘keep alive’. If you kept forgetting to feed them or play with them or clean up their massive piles of pixelated poop they would die.

Tamagotchi happy1

Mine died. Because I played with it endlessly for about a day and then got bored and didn’t feed it or play with it and allowed it to live amongst the poop for too long. This is pretty much my mantra for life: Something is super-exciting for about ten minutes, and then it becomes annoying and boring and generally seem like too much effort to actually bother with. And then I pretty much start resenting it. Then I come back to it weeks/months/years later, forgetting all the hate and resentment and wondering why it’s no longer as brilliant and fun as it was to begin with (in the case of the Tamagotchi, because it was dead).

Jo's Tamagotchi

I’m sure I quit similes a few paragraphs back because I decided I was terrible at using them, and yet here I am again going off on a whopping digression comparing my entire life with how I treated my Tamagotchi.

Anyway…

I always have a thousand TOTALLY VALID excuses for skipping out on the internets for a while. But then coming back to blogging is like starting a new diet or a new exercise regime (seriously, stop with the similes) all over again. What I’m saying is, the weeks off from the internets/diet/gym undo all the hard work put in so far. Essentially, I start back at the beginning again.

And I’m a bit sick of starting back at the beginning again. Because when I’m back at the beginning and faced with the challenge of writing a post and pleading people to read it, I’m more inclined to give up easily and fill the text with terrible similes.

This time, my excuses extend to completely changing practically every aspect of my life in the space of two months,  and then deciding to take part in NaNoWriMo (again) which was totally stupid, because I failed (again). But in the 20k (or so) words that I did actually manage to hammer out, I got a few good ideas which could work for the blog. And so I’ve decided to make concerted effort to blog more consistently. The quality might be a bit patchy (i.e. talking about Tamagotchi poop and apple crumble), but at least it will be something. And that something might get posted more than once every two months.

If you’re someone who happens to read this blog regularly, then I guess I want to say thanks. And also, sorry for being really bad at updating.

So from here on out reader(s) (and spambots trying to sell Ugg boots in my comments section) it’s all change: I’m promise to post regularly. But I honestly can’t make any promises about refraining from using terrible similes.

PS. If you’re the person who found this blog by Googling “accidentally drooled on motherboard” then please get the hell in touch – joandthenovelist[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk. I’d love to hear from you.

Aug 3 2011

Just be better. Way better. At EVERYTHING.

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‘Why am I not a much better person?’

This has to be the most frequently asked question that my psyche asks. Why am I not better? Why am I not much better? Why am I not a million times better than I currently am? And I’m not just asking why I’m not better at one thing, I want to know why I’m not better at everything.

My head is overcrowded with variations of this question – a constant swarm of voices telling me to just. Be. Better.

Way better.

There are so many things that I need to not suck at doing, that I’m completely overwhelmed as to what I should stop sucking at first. As ever, please consult the scientific diagram below which fully illustrates my neuroses:

Be better at everything

I know that it’s bad to compare yourself with other people and not to quote Desiderata too much, (there will always be greater and lesser people than yourself) but I do. I still compare myself with other people because people are getting married, and promoted and having babies all over the place. And while I’m not jealous because I don’t really aspire to any of those things, I still feel as though I’m seriously lagging behind.

In my head, my life should be an all-round wholesome sphere of joy and harmony, and I should feel engaged with life rather than detached from it.

In the infinitely-better-version-of-me:

  • I get up at 6am everyday, do yoga while eating organic yogurt and homemade granola and reading The Guardian from cover to cover and tweeting  my every thought on Twitter to improve traffic to my blog.
  • I write 2000 words of a potentially best-selling literary masterpiece, before briskly walking to work feeling somewhat alert and spiritually Zen and wearing clothes that are sharp and stylish and make me look super-hot.
  • I have some cool job or other, which involves having a desk by the window, a cappuccino machine, pleasant telephone conversations and people asking me for my opinion.
  • At lunch I meet my agent or editor or whoever to discuss my latest creative  project, and afterwards I go to David Mitchell‘s house for a cup of tea and chat about all the stuff I’d read in The Guardian that day, as well as his recent article in The Observer and I’m all ‘David, today’s article was brilliant,’ and he’s all ‘Thanks Jo, would you like sugar in your tea?’ and I’m  all ‘David, you’re so funny – you KNOW I don’t take sugar because I’m so damn wholesome and well-rounded,’ Then we laugh and eat organic wholemeal scones.
  • I go to the gym and work out like a ninja before sprinting home to cook some kind of delicious culinary taste-fest for my friends (of which there are many), who later descend on my trendy city centre loft apartment for an evening of philosophical discussions, cocktails and Nintendo (not necessarily in that order) until the early hours of the morning when I snuggle up in my King size bed and have a restful sleep that doesn’t involve having troublesome nightmares about zombie-cat-vampires.

And that’s pretty much it. That’s all I want out of life. Oh, and maybe bigger boobs. And a smaller nose. But in my head this is the person I should try to be… A British, politically minded, Carrie Bradshaw who is big chums with David Mitchell. And is really good at Nintendo.

Actually, thinking about it, SJP has a big nose and small boobs and everyone freaking loved her as Carrie Bradshaw (except some people kind of hated her with a passion). So I guess, that technically, I don’t need to worry about the boobs and the nose for now.

Anyway, given the unlikeliness of any of this ever filtering into my petty existence, not to mention how worryingly idealistic I am, it’s little wonder that I give myself such a hard time for being the exact opposite:

The Reality of Jo

In and amongst the endless list of things to do to change and become an infinitely better person, there’s this list of startling reality points which I endlessly torture myself with.

Earlier this week, I read this blog post by the fantastic Hipstercrite, and I actually began to feel a little, sort of, maybe okay again. Because even though I shouldn’t constantly compare myself with other people, at least I can be safe in the knowledge that I’m not alone. There are other people stuck in the colossal nightmare that is their twenties, still bumbling around in a post-graduation haze wondering what it is they’re supposed to do with their life. And they’re all poor and in miserable admin jobs too. The twenties is a suckfest decade. And all I can say is that I hope I get this self-doubt confusion stuff out of my system now. If only to prevent myself from having a complete meltdown in the future – when I’m a forty-year old British, politically-minded ninja Carrie Bradshaw and regular tea and scone guest at David Mitchell’s house.